Name in Japanese D Donna

Donna in Japanese

ドナ
Katakana
ドナ
Hiragana
どな
Romaji (Hepburn)
Dona

This is the established spelling used for Donna in Japanese dictionaries, books and media.

How Donna sounds in Japanese

Read it one katakana at a time:

Do
Na

Full reading: Dona

Do more with Donna in Japanese

Why Donna is written in katakana

In Japanese, foreign names are written in katakana — the angular script reserved for words borrowed from other languages. So on a form, a name tag, a delivery slip or a news article in Japan, Donna appears as ドナ. This is the correct and respectful way a non-Japanese name is represented; it is not a kanji "translation". A Japanese reader sees ドナ and immediately reads it by its sound, Dona.

Katakana is a syllabary, so English sounds are fitted to the nearest Japanese syllables and every consonant (except ん) is followed by a vowel. That is why Donna becomes ドナ rather than a letter-for-letter copy. More than one katakana spelling can be reasonable for the same name, which is why we flag whether a spelling is a long-established one or a natural default.